CS632: Course Information

Instructor

Johannes Gehrke
Office hours: Tuesdays 11:00am-noon, and by appointment (send me email).
Office: 4105A Upson Hall

Location and Hours

Class hours: TR 2:50pm-4:05pm
Location: Upson 111

Text Book

Readings in Database Systems, M. Stonebraker and J. Hellerstein (eds.), 4th edition, MIT Press, 2005.

This text book is required.

You will be graded based on your performance in the following components of the course.

Grading

Homework for each class (30% of overall grade)

You should carefully read the papers assigned for each class before coming to class. For each paper, you will have to write two paragraphs:

  • One paragraph that clearly summarizes the major contributions of the paper.
  • One paragraph that identifies a major weakness in the paper.

In addition, for one of the papers assigned for each class (this paper will be selected by the course instructor), you will have to write a one paragraph description that: 

  • Discusses how the techniques proposed in the paper could be extended to address the major weakness you identified (or if you think that the paper is unsalvageable, explain why this is the case, and describe an alternative technique to address this weakness). The proposed solutions do not have to be elaborated in great detail, but should be plausible and well thought-out.

You will have to upload the paper descriptions into the Course Management System (CMS) before 11:59pm on the day before the papers will be discussed in class. Upload a single text file that contains all the paper descriptions for a given class.

Class participation (10% of overall grade)

Since this is a seminar-style course, you are expected to participate in class discussions.

Class presentation (15% of overall grade)

You will be responsible for one of the class lectures, where you will have to present the research papers to be discussed in that class. Your presentation should be carefully prepared, and I strongly encourage you to start preparing the slides at least 2 weeks before the date of the presentation. You should show your slides to the instructor at least a week before your presentation (for feedback and possible modifications).

Course project (45% of overall grade)

You have to do a database research project either alone or in a group of two. Usually several of the course projects will lead to publishable results, and I encourage you to have a publication as a goal in the course. The project will have the following milestones:

  1. Literature survey: A survey of the literature relevant to the project. (10%)
  2. Project proposal: This document should include a description of your algorithms and ideas, the design of the piece of software you are proposing to build (if applicable), and a description of how you propose to evaluate your ideas such as what experiments you plan to run. (5%)
  3. Mid-point review: This will be an opportunity for you to meet with the course instructor during the first week of April to discuss your progress on the project, and receive some feedback. Please note that you are strongly encouraged to discuss your project with the instructor throughout the course of the semester (either during office hours or by appointment), and the mid-point review is only one such opportunity for you to receive feedback.
  4. Final project report and a short presentation to the class about your course project. (30%)